"Long ago, the Healing Church used phantasms to reach a lofty plane of darkness, but failed to make contact with the outer reaches of the cosmos."

"The rite failed to achieve its intended purpose, but instead created a small exploding star, now a powerful part of the Choir's arsenal.

"At times, failure is the mother of invention."

A Call Beyond is a secret rite of The Choir. Its intended purpose was to make contact with a "lofty plane of darkness".

It's quite likely that Ebrietas is connected to this "lofty plane of darkness".

Ebrietas is clearly very important to The Choir, but her exact function in this world is a big mystery. Yet she is laden with clues hinting to her importance.

Ebrietas And H. P. Lovecraft

The above are all Lovecraftian beings and fairly authentic as they come.

From left to right: Elder Thing, a member of The Great Race of Yith, Cthulhu (High Priest of the Great Old Ones).Elder Thing:The following is from wikipedia:"In the Mythos canon, the Elder Things were the first extraterrestrial species to come to the Earth, colonizing the planet about one billion years ago. They stood roughly eight feet tall and had the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both ends. The top appendage was a head adorned with five eyes, five eating tubes, and a set of cilia for "seeing" without light. The bottom appendage was five-limbed and was used for walking and other forms of locomotion. The beings also had five leathery, fan-like retractable wings and five sets of branching tentacles that sprouted from their torsos."Lovecraft described the Elder Things as vegetable-like or echinoderm-like in shape, having radial symmetry instead of the bilateral symmetry of bipeds. They also differed in that they had a five-lobed brain. The Elder Things exhibited vegetable as well as animal characteristics, and in terms of reproduction, multiplied using spores, although they discouraged increasing their numbers except when colonizing new regions. Though they could make use of both organic and inorganic substances, the Elder Things were carnivorous by preference. They were also amphibious. The bodies of the Elder Things were incredibly tough, capable of withstanding the pressures of the deepest ocean. Few died except by accident or violence. The beings were also capable of hibernating for vast epochs of time. Nonetheless, unlike many other beings of the Mythos, the Elder Things were made of normal, terrestrial matter."

Obviously Lovecraft intended them to look really weird. They share a number of traits with Ebrietas but it's not a perfect fit.

The following traits fit:

+Tubes +Tentacles +Cilia +Wings +Plant and Animal Characteristics +Aquatic (Her anatomy ought to favor aquatic over terrestrial life. The Altar of Despair is also full of trapped water, perhaps she requires the dampness) +Sturdy (Ebrietas has very high defenses, especially against Blunt)

The following traits don't fit:

-Ebrietas does not possess radial symmetry. -Ebrietas does not possess starfish traits or 5-sidedness. -The Elder Things are superhuman but mortal, made of regular matter and they need to reproduce. They are not gods.

Ebrietas is a Great One, which is generally thought to be a kind of god or superhuman being.

"A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." - H.P.Lovecraft

This description is vague, with some parts conforming with her design and other parts conflicting with it.

Ebrietas has a body that is "vaguely anthropoid ", up to a point . You'd have to ignore the extra limbs and split tentacles .

Her strange head could pass for "octopus-like" and certainly matches "a face with a mass of feelers".

Cthulhu is described as having "long, narrows wings" which does fit the wings of Ebrietas, which are "narrow " up to the point where they lack all webbing.

But Ebrietas has no "prodigious claws on hind and fore feet", she has tentacles and no feet. Her body is neither "scaly" nor "rubbery-looking".

This sword, one of the rare dragon weapons,came from the tail of Seath the Scaleless,the pale white dragon who betrayed his own.Seath is the grandfather of sorcery, and thissword is imbued with his magic, which shallbe unleashed as a wave of moonlight.

During the great war between the dragons and the Lords of Fire, Seath turned against his own kin and sided with Fire.

That slug could just be part of a larger clad of creatures, that involves invertebrates and the arcane, and which evolved from DeS enemies like Mind Flayers.

Seath And The Events At Lothric

In returning to Seath, Seath was experimenting with ways of becoming immortal and initially succeeded by linking his lifeforce to the Primordial Crystal .

"Ah, the secret of Seath's immortality?If you have fought him, and were imprisoned, you must know that Seath is a true Undead, different from ourselves.His wounds close promptly and no mortal blow affects him, granting true insulation from death.It is an effect of the Primordial Crystal, a sacred treasure pillaged by Seath when he turned upon the ancient dragons.So, only by destroying the Primordial Crystal can you so much as scratch his hide.And it so happens, the primordial Crystal is in the inner garden of these very archives, the Crystal Forest." - Big Hat Logan

In DS3, The Fire Keeper makes reference to something she calls: "the darkness within me", and also explains that transposing is a lost Fire Keeper art.

Ashen one, may I pose thee a question? Has the little Lord Ludleth spoken to thee of any... curious matters? I sense that he possesseth some knowledge... Of a thing once most precious, or most terrible, now lost to the Fire Keepers. - Fire KeeperDS3

The dark nature of blue lightning was ultimately proven, when in DS3 it was only ever produced by Gael, the abyss bellied eater, and host, of The Dark Soul.

It may be that Kos is the host of such abyssal cosmos, a creator of unholy life, analogous to The Old One, who might just be the origin of Ebrietas' present form.

Azathoth

"Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."

"Azathoth" is another one of Lovecraft's better known deities. Azathoth is the sole creator of the universe and the high king of all evil gods.

A repugnant mass of nonsense, Azathoth is described as "an idiot god". His creation of the evil gods, the universe and all of life, was nothing but an accident.

Void of consciousness, he creates from the fundamental chaos within his nature. He did it all with the facility of taking a breath, like bacteria excreting waste.

Azathoth is at all times attended by a thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes, as well as the maddening beating of vile drums.

As it happens, Upper Cathedral Ward has its own musical score, an eerie wail called "Soothing Hymn".

That's unusual for a Souls game, where music is typically reserved for boss battles and hubs, but not other areas.

Ebrietas controls a body covered in curious vents. Judge for yourself if one may compare "Soothing Hymn" to a monotonous whining of pipes.

The eerie wail will continue until you wake Ebrietas, at which point a chorus will start singing, and the music will gain much more pomp.

Using her strange vents, Ebrietas could be the source behind these eerie sounds, the composer of a sinister hymn to "soothe" the monstrous Azathoth.

It's equally possible that her bombastic score is solely for her own honor, a self produced orchestra befitting the hubris of a demon.

Observations & Trivia

Ebrietas' head displays contorted faces that vaguely resemble the facade of a human skull

I try to deal in facts to the extent that it's actually possible to do so.Links to these pages are accompanied by statements like &quot;this MAY be the case&quot;.The pages themselves are under a section called theory, so I don't know what exactly isn't obvious.These pages are of the order of strategies, tips and flavor texts that can be found all over Fextralife.They do not have the exactness of the damage formulas or the item drop rates. Not because that's something I want, but because I simply can't provide that sort of exactness.

I mean no offence since you're free to speculate and theorise away all you want, but as a long time user and contributor I deem it very annoying that the link to this page is shared in a lot of fextrawiki pages that YOU deem to be tied in to eachother with only your speculations and theories as a reason. This is a wiki so we base our info on facts and this is quite the burden to see this link on way to many pages, when it's based on your take instead of the actual ingame facts that ARE proven. I would kindly ask you to refrain from this as a fellow user and contributor.

Good detail, but I think you missed two other important Lovecraft entities that Ebrietas could draw influence from, unless I missed it skimming through.

Shub Niggurath, also referred to as the Black Goat of the Woods with a thousand young, was Lovecrafts deity of beast and monsters. Considering the happenings in Yharnam, it could be stated that Ebrietas is similar than to Shub Niggurath in bringing about beasts into the human world by sharing the Old Blood and it's knowledge. In appearance, Ebrietas does share some similar physical features as depictions of Shub Niggurath.

The other entity would be Yog-Sothoth, who is referred to as the Key and the Gate, inferring that Yog Sothoth is the guardian of eldritch lore and to the realm of the Great Old Ones . The function Ebrietas plays in the narrative certainly indicates that through Ebrietas, humans can achieve forbidden knowledge of the world and the Old Ones. Likewise, Yog-Sothoth is morally ambivalent to humans, neither evil nor good, and will share the forbidden knowledge. However, with such knowledge come great consequences, such as insanity or inviting things into the world best left locked away. I see Ebrietas in a similar manner, where she shares her knowledge with people with no real concern on the outcome, and humans in their unwise decision to pursue such knowledge ultimately invited eldritch creatures into the world and insanity in this pursuit.

While some can be viewed as malevolent, it's hard to categorize the Great Old Ones of Cthulhu, similar the Old Ones in Bloodborne, as being evil. Often these elder gods are merely indifferent to humans, with little interest in morality. To them, there merely is and isn't, and things man is not prepared to encounter.

Unless I see a link citing Gwydolin's sire, I am more than certain that he is the bastard of Seathe and Gwyn's wife. Seathe has the affinity for the moon and Gywn being royally mad he got cucked raised Gwyndolin as a girl so that he wouldn't be raised to be king like his older brother the Nameless King (before he got b4nned from history by Gwyn)

"Remnant of the Eldritch Truth encountered at Byrgenwerth... The initial encounter marked the the start of an inquiry into the cosmos from within the old labyrinth, and led to the establishment of the Choir."

Originally I thought the Augur of Ebrietas description was implying that Ebrietas was this "initial encounter," but then I thought, what if this is actually referring to Byrgenwerth's discovery of Kos at the Fishing Hamlet? After harvesting the parasites and phantasms within Kos, the Tomb Prospectors began their search of the Old Labyrinth, a place that they knew seems to revive the dead to some degree, perhaps in search of Kos herself. Instead, they discovered the "Holy Medium" (probably Queen Yharnam's blood or Mergo), which "led to the establishment of the Choir," the first step toward the foundation of the Healing Church.

Eventually, this may have led to the discovery of Ebrietas, or possibly even her creation. I can't shake the feeling that Ebrietas has something to do with Kos, even though her title is typically considered a red herring by fans. My theory is that the Kos Parasite was used to create her, or perhaps it evolved to become her, based on the fact that the Parasite utilizes tentacle attacks similarly to the Augur, among other things. This would also apply reason to the "Daughter of the Cosmos" moniker, and would also explain why Ebrietas appears to be mourning at the Altar of Despair--after all, what is a parasite but a gestating surrogate?

By combining the "Holy Medium" and the Parasite, I wonder if this resulted in Ebrietas, a creature that bleeds both red, human blood as well as silver, kin blood? Unfortunately, like A Call Beyond, this attempt was not entirely successful, and evidently left the Choir with more questions than it did answers, prompting more aggressive experimentation... which I could go on and on about, but that would lead to topics outside the Ebrietas lore.

Has anyone talked about what Ebrietas' name means? It's the Latin word for drunkenness or intoxication--which, if her blood is the "holy medium" Alfred's talking about, would be fitting, considering the addictive effects of blood ministration and the deranged intoxication of blood-drunk hunters.

I've just two little things I read far enough to catch before I stopped:1. Ludwigs holy blade was inspired by moonlight greatsword, it seems to be an imitation produced to help give church hunters an advantage during the hunt. That said it captures the concept but not the essence of what it mimics - It can be a longsword or greatsword but does not inherently have that same arcane power.2. phantasms are the augurs of the Great Ones, That is inclusive of almost all other Arcane hunters tool items - not only the auger of ebritas. The "empty phantasm shell" and "a call beyond" both fall into this category seem to support this inference.

(I mean no disrespect by stating that I decided to stop reading though,)

Also it seems that kin (like beasts) were once human, In fact because of Rom we can generalize that "Kin" are humans "blessed" through power of a Great One. The mercury-Blood of kin is an unusual common trait of the kin type enemies. That said "Living failures" seem to be Kin made for ascension (possibly hinted at in their inherent use of celestial arcane powers) - only unable to realize their potential due to some deficiency perhaps a lack of "insight"... For clarification Great Ones are powerful enough to call upon the celestial forces of the cosmos independent of any item/focus, something that the failures are only implied to be able to do together. (which is shown through them all ceasing all other actions to call such forces) My question is not how "pale" mercury blood connects the kin but why? Due to the early appearance lore wise, I would sspeculate a potential connection between the multi-blooded Ebrietas (one of if-not the first kin) and the great unseen one Odeon. Ebrietas seems to be more "evolved" than even the failures or rom in its use of and expansion of the power behind "a call beyond". I would also presume that the "true" Great Ones either were never human to begin with OR are kin who have managed to through other means (perhaps insight related, or related to the most powerful Great Ones) managed to ascend.

I would also suggest to the person who mentioned star sounds that there could be a relation between them and several of the caryll runes that "inscribe inaudible sounds" of what they represent. Perhaps the song is a "star sound" representation of of the thing that comforts most the kin/great ones. Perhaps Ebrietas is "singing" the wisdom the Great Ones blessed her with...

I just noticed after defeating her in the Isz Chalice that her "blood" is actually silver, not black or brown. I gave her a visceral attack, and was drenched in both red blood and an undeniably glistening silver fluid. This prompted me to, uh, dissect some other Kin enemies, and I quickly realized they also bled silver, not brown or black as you suggest. Normally this this is difficult to see, but when wearing all white attire, especially the White Church set (female), the color of enemies' blood becomes much more distinguishable.

Each the brainsuckers, celestial mobs, celestial larvae, Celestial Emissary, and Ebrietas all bleed this silvery fluid (the only Kin enemy that bleeds red is the Garden of Eyes, for some reason). It's no wonder that brainsuckers and celestial mobs frequently drop QS Bullets, far more often than any huntsmen. Could this fluid possibly be mercury? Is their metallic blood the reason they're so weak to Bolt? I wonder if in the world of Bloodborne, mercury results in madness, but also vice versa.

The note about the music that plays in the Upper Cathedral Ward intrigued me. Examining the song, "Soothing Hymn," it's anything but; it's a horrifying mix of shrill squeaks, haunting, chalky resonances, and low, stuttering growls. It'd be standard fare for any unsettling horror environment, and otherwise serves to very well make the dark hallways of the environment very foreboding. But, nothing in this game being as it seems, I decided to examine further. These sounds are too irregular and random to simply be background music, too alien. My insight was prompted by the revelation that I'd heard this chordless music before, and the realization that these sounds are ACTUALLY alien.

It's true that sound doesn't travel through space because there's no medium for it to travel. But the idea that space is completely silent is only partly correct. Space is loud with light, radiation, and magnetic fields which falter and ebb like a flag waving in the wind. Search up youtube for any video involving "star sounds" or "planet sounds," and you'll get a few video results for the magnetic resonances that certain planets or stars produce, translated into sound. The similarities between "Soothing Hymn" and these resonances are too much to be simple coincidence, at least in my opinion.

This is my own speculation from this point on. To a "Child of the Cosmos" or "Child of the Stars" (Kin, perhaps?) the melodies of the blackness between stars would be quite familiar, and perhaps even a reminder of their home. In human terms it'd be the equivalent to listening to the wind rustling through the leaves of trees, or maybe more like windchimes though with solarwind playing across whole planets rather than metal or wooden chimes. One would think, to a creature from the blackness of deep space, that these sounds would be quite "Soothing." It's also possible that such a creature, stuck on a planet and within a magnetic field, can't hear them or hears them only faintly and distorted as if listening from under deep water. She might sing them to herself from memory in the absence of such sounds occurring naturally.

The reason why the "Soothing Hymn" exists is now still subject to debate. The note in Rakuyo's theory states that perhaps Ebrietas is producing this melody herself. This wouldn't be too much of a stretch, as it's akin to a woman singing to herself, perhaps much like the Winter Lanterns, and it is atypical to hear music outside a boss fight or hub. But if this is the case, why is Ebrietas singing this "Soothing Hymn?" Perhaps she does so to comfort herself, alone and "Left Behind" she sings music that reminds her of home. Maybe she sings to the Altar of Despair, or Altar of Grief, being the corpse or shell of a Vacuous Spider.

Personally, with the references to dreams, sleep, and children, noting that this takes place under an Orphanage, I would think that the song Ebrietas may be singing, the "Soothing Hymn," is actually a lullaby. Perhaps she sings it to herself, a Daughter of the Stars who sings a song the Stars themselves once sung to her. Perhaps she sings to the dead Vacuous Spider, a song sung to a corpse that it might find peace on whatever plane of the Nightmare it has ascended to. Maybe the Vacuous Spider is her former shell, and she's grieving over her lost and perhaps less lonely childhood. Whatever the reason, it just raises more questions, though in my own speculation, any interpretation just serves to make the scene so much more sad. I'm of the opinion that a translation of the lyrics in the Ebrietas boss fight music might reveal more clues, as rough (generous, more like coarse) translations do provide a few speculative clues.

I think in all likelihood ebrietas is the source of all kin, I've always found it odd that two great ones are kin yet some aren't, how and why would this be? Rom is suspected by many to has been a byrgenwerth scholar at one point, and we know that iosefka was capable of turning humans into celestial minions which are kin and the emissary is physically identical to the mobs in all but size but can shrink to hide among them, to me this means that the emissary is in all likelihood the successful product of the choirs efforts, an artificial great one created by human hands, it's the only explanation for the uniformity between the emissary and the mobs, all other kin were failed attempts through different techniques or methods most likely but were all likely born from ebrietas' DNA hence the name kin which refers to one's relatives, Rom is speculated to has been blessed by kos and became a great one as a result, but the alter of despair was likely the source of this transformation, it's name and form suggest the alter is a former great one that ebrietas continues to mourn hence the name, I for one think the alter itself is likely the so called holy medium, it makes perfect sense, Rom was made in its image and the apostles that take the form of spiders are likely the result of attempting to replicate roms transformation, human then human headed spider then regular apostle then child of rom, but only rom can produce true children of rom and the other spiders are failures just like the celestial mobs, but the children are just familiars and not people like the apostles in my opinion, anyway that's why rom guards the secret of mensis, because mensis is a faction of the choir and hence her comrades as she was thought to be a scholar herself, she's protecting them from the interference of outsiders and hiding the truth from yharnum to keep its citizens complacent, ebrietas contacted through the augurs found in the chalice dungeon or perhaps hamlet, once the choir had her attention she allowed her presence in their facility to mourn the great one in the alter, it's corpse still having power just as the shell of a phantasm does, it only works on the vileblood queen simply because hers are the only remains one is given the option to place there, most other human remains are used in chalice rituals and therefore a hunter wouldn't think to put them on the alter especially since they hold no meaning to the hunter, after all the hunter didn't know them but he/she knew the queen, and not only that but the alter suggests that great ones are attemporal to some extent meaning that the laws of time itself don't apply to them at least not in the same way which would explain how they can be killed in the main game then reapear in the chalice dungeons

Could there be a connection between Mother Kos, also called Kosm by Micolash, and Ebrietas? I find the similarity between Kosm and Cosmos odd... If Ebrietas is the daughter of the Kosmos, found in The Orphanage, there could be some relation between her and the Orphan of Kos. IDK, just a thought.